Tephra fallout: The amount of fallout is great from Vík in the west to the east of Öræfajökull. The amount of ash fall is the greatest close to the village Kirkjubæjarklaustur. Ash has been detected in several areas throughout the country, except in the northwest.

A sample from Kirkjubæjarklaustur has been analyzed, which was taken around 1h on 22 May. The grains are glassy with micro crystals of plagioclase. Samples well sorted.

Whole rock analysis: Basalt, with 50-51 Wt% SiO2

Leachate results: 5-10 mg/kg of waterdissolvable flour

Grain size distribution: about 10% of the volume of the analyzed samples is finer than 10 micrometer

Sunday, April 3, 2011

I also found some readings from KEK in Tokyo, that are similar but more frequently updated than the SPEED! measurements. They are here and here. As shown earlier, these measurements show several spikes stemming from the releases from the reactors and a larger set of bump starting around March 21st that seem to correlate with the pool cooling events. As soon as the pools are filled, i.e. cooled, the sources terms stops immediately.

At the start of the accidents, there was not much data with regards to the source term at Fukushima, i.e how much elements were escaping from the reactors. Most of the computations performed by different groups were focused on a worst case scenario of continuous release, which was never supported by any of the SPEED! measurements. The simulations include:

Special Forecast products for Fukushima produced by NILU-ATMOS (disclaimer: These products are highly uncertain based on limited information for the source terms. Please use with caution and understand that the values are likely to change once we obtain more information on the overall nature of the accident. The products should be considered informational and only indicate 'worst case scenario' releases. From what we've learned recently, it seems releases of this magnitude have not yet occurred. Furthermore, these modeling products are based on global meteorological data, which are too coarse to provide reliable details of the transport of the plume across Japan.)

Eurad simulations. (Fukushima site) Disclaimer: This simulation is a so called "worst case scenario" with continuous release rate. The value of 0001 Bq / m 3 correspond to appr. one millionth of the concentration at the source. At distances more than appr. 2000 km away from the source, the concentrations are not harmful to health. The simulation starts at fictitious 15.03. 00 UTC and will continue to run in order to Demonstrate the InterContinental. Relaese exact transport When rates are published we will restart the simulation with reliable values.

When given more data from the CTBTO, the german Eurad model was re-run and the dispersion model was compared as to when CTBTO stations would detect the plume from the Fukushima plant. The animated gif is here.

and seems to show a pretty good fit with regards to when the stations would detect elements given the new simulations. Finally, an NOAA HYSPLIT model is currently being run by somebody which seems to give similar result with regards to particle trajectories. It is here.

Cooling of spent fuel poolsAt approximately 8:21 am, March 20th, water discharge to Unit 4 by fire engine has started with the cooperation of Self-Defense Forces.

Or because the graph shows counting performed for the whole day in California (as opposed to actual time period) another later event:

Cooling of Spent FuelFrom 3: 05 PM to 5: 20 PM on March 20th, 40 tons of seawater was injected into Unit 2 by TEPCO employees.

The finding seems consistent with any of two source terms occurring at

8:31 AM on March 20th, or about midnight March 20th (GMT) and,

3:05PM/5:20PM on March 20th or about (6:00AM GMT March 20th).

The detection in California has occurred around March 24th (PST) or about March 24th/March 25th (GMT).

Hence it becomes difficult to delineate which of the two source terms was effectively detected at Berkeley. Now let us watch the Tokyo measurements. it shows a start at about 8:00 am March 21st (JST)

which seems consistent with reactor #4 pool cooldown. The second peak seems connected to the reactor #2 cooldown but it could also be connected to the smoke observed on top of unit 3 (March 21), however that would seem unlikely since according to TEPCO environmental readings remained at the same level when the fumes occurred. Once the cooldown is obtained and stable, there is no expectation of further release to the environment. The expectation is now that the radiation measurements should continue decreasing (irrespective of whether the winds are westerly).

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Friday, April 1•2011-04-01 12Z - forecast only•2011-04-01 06Z - forecast only•2011-04-01 00Z - forecast only
Dates and times are shown in international format: YYYY-MM-DD HHZ. The Z indicates that the hours are given in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC or Greenwich time).
Japan is 9 hours ahead of UTC. (00Z is 9:00 a.m. in Japan.)

That spike has been attributed to "rain" in sources that I've seen, for example in Daniel Garcia's graph here: http://twitpic.com/4f0qfr

The graph no longer exists but it showed the dose rate increase with a mention of "rain" next to it. I responded with:

Thanks for the comment and info. Rain is just the final means by which the radioactive components eventually are deposited in some area ( on some sensors). What is important to understand is how this is transported. In this entry, I am trying to figure out what is the possible source term at the plant that could have triggered this increase in the dose rate. With the help of the Texas A&M computations showing the delayed transport between the plant and some other area, it looks plausible to have this event be the cooling of the spent fuel pool of reactor 2 being the culprit. The cooling must have produced evaporation that eventually fed into the plume. The Texas A&M computation seem to suggest that there is a good fit between the time this event happened and the time is was detected several hours later in Ibakari. If you have any other source of information, I would love to hear about them.

In other words, the insertion of sea water in the spent fuel pool of reactor 4 on March 21st, seems consistent with the dose rate increase in Ibakari several hours later (please note that I am not saying it is the only reason, just that it seems consistent based on the incomplete data we have so far). In particular, the trajectory computations show the possibility of the particles born from the cooling of the fuel rods to be over Ibakari in the right time frame. The rain is probably a compounding element that enabled the 4 microSv/hr dose rate increase as detected by the prefecture measurements.

Dr. Matthias Braun from Areva produced a presentation, available from Energy from Thorium, that provides a background to folks who do not know nuclear systems, All the information in that presentation stem from data gathered from different sources accessible over the internet. Of interest are the following two slides. The first one is a timeline that stops just before March 21st and the second shows how different the accident in the pool at reactor #4 is with regards to radiological release from similar release from reactor 1 through 3. As stated in the presentation, we do not know if these releases have occurred already.Let us note that the presentation talks about pool #4 whereas the dose rate increase seems consistent with water thrown in pool #2.

On the 22th, at 21:00 JST on March 22, there is a drop, that coincides with a westerly wind. Then the dose rate goes up as the winds comes back to the Ibakari region. So it looks like from the information currently available, the cooling of the pool in reactor 2 and attendant vapor generation might be responsible for this increase in dose rate in Ibakari.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident Update (28 March, 23:00 UTC)

Japan Confirms Plutonium in Soil Samples at Fukushima Daiichi.After taking soil samples at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese authorities today confirmed finding traces of plutonium that most likely resulted from the nuclear accident there. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told the IAEA that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had found concentrations of plutonium in two of five soil samples.

Traces of plutonium are not uncommon in soil because they were deposited worldwide during the atmospheric nuclear testing era. However, the isotopic composition of the plutonium found at Fukushima Daiichi suggests the material came from the reactor site, according to TEPCO officials. Still, the quantity of plutonium found does not exceed background levels tracked by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology over the past 30 years.

It is important to realize that plutonium is already in the background in large part because of atomic weapons test performed in the 1950s and 1960s in the atmosphere. These tests released plumes of these materials in the atmosphere. The TEPCO/Fukushima anlysis shows specifically that these soil samples have elements of the reactors as the composition of fissile material is different from the atmospheric tests of the 50-60s. From wikipedia, here is historical account on the truely known toxicity of Plutonium:

....Several populations of people who have been exposed to plutonium dust (e.g. people living down-wind of Nevada test sites, Hiroshima survivors, nuclear facility workers, and "terminally ill" patients injected with Pu in 1945–46 to study Pu metabolism) have been carefully followed and analyzed.

These studies generally do not show especially high plutonium toxicity or plutonium-induced cancer results.[88] "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during the 1940's; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."[94][95]...

I have had a small exchange with Dr. Ken Bowman on the model used for these simulations:

Dear Igor,

... I finally found a little time to look at your blog. I like the way that you are bringing things together.

The model that I am running is good for giving a general idea of where a release might go on the large scale. The resolution of the global winds is about 50 km. At that resolution, the model does a poor job of representing the mountainous topography of Japan. My maps should not be called an 'aerosol simulation', as they have no aerosol physics in them, just passive advection by the winds....

Thanks Ken.

Finally, microsioevert.net is a new site featuring a different kind of vizualisation than we have been accustomed to,

And it looks like the winds are going westerly. In other news, the French Teleray radiation sensor network has detected the plume in metropolitan France. All measurements show that the plume is in the background. The following graph show radiation level average over a month and radiation level for the plume:

Of interest is a summary of what was found in other countries:

Measurement results were published in the United States by the protection agency(EPA - http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/). They show small traces of radioactive products released during the Fukushima accident, were detected on filters as atmospheric dust samples in California (San Francisco, Riverside, Anaheim) and in the state of Washington (Seattle) on the west coast. Radionuclides are identified 131, tellurium 132, iodine 132 and cesium 137. Concentrations measured on March 18 for those elements are a few tenths of a mBq / m3 or lower. In Scandinavia, iodine 131 was measured in air in Stockholm, Umeå and Kiruna (Sweden) at a concentration of less than 0.30 mBq / m3, in Finland (less than 1 mBq / m3), Germany (0.33 mBq / m3 for all artificial radionuclides detected) for samples performed between 22 and 23 March. In the Netherlands, iodine was also detected in air: a concentration of 0.17 mBq / m3. These results are consistent, in terms of date and order of magnitude, with forecasts performed by Météo France at the global level, in collaboration with IRSN. They confirm particularly in Europe, the dispersed radioactive elements came from the north, as provided for the modeling of Météo France.

The Google Maps Mania blog pointed out to another instance of trajectory computation called Shared Air by the folks at University of Michigan. In these maps, you choose a city in Japan and figure out if the winds and particle came from Fukushima. It really is the reverse problem that the Texas A&M computations do.

Friday, March 25, 2011

[Update: The folks at the Unversity of Washington are now aware of this opportunity]

The arxiv blog just featured a paper that appeared on arxiv that points to an analysis of the plume that landed at the University of Washington in Seattle. The paper is at the end of this entry. A good summary is here, from the text:

Finally, there are a huge number of possible breakdown products from nuclear fission in a reactor and yet the Seattle team found evidence of only three fission product elements--iodine, cesium and tellurium. "This points to a specifific process of release into the atmosphere," they say.

Cesium Iodide is highly soluble in water. So these guys speculate that what they're seeing is the result of contaminated steam being released into the atmosphere. "Chernobyl debris, conversely, showed a much broader spectrum of elements, reflecting the direct dispersal of active fuel elements," they say.

The folks at University of Washington ought to be looking at the Texas A&M simulations to see if and when they are going to catch up elements of the plumes.

Unit 3 is still a concern today as an analysis of the water outside of the secondary containment has shown elements such as Technetium-99m (Thanks David).

To see if the plume contains some of these elements, we ought to be looking at the smoke that left unit 3. As per TEPCO's report:

At approximately 4:00 pm, March 21st, light gray smoke was confirmed arising from the floor roof of the Unit 3 building. On March 22nd, the color of smoke changed to somewhat white and it is slowly dissipating.

-At approximately 10:45 pm on March 22nd, the light in the main control room was turned on.

-At around 4:20 pm on March 23rd, our staff confirmed light black smoke belching from the Unit 3 building. At approximately 11:30 pm on March 23rd and 4:50 am on March 24th, our employee found no signs of smoke.

We report results of air monitoring started due to the recent natural catastrophe on March 11, 2011 in Japan and the severe ensuing damage to the Fukushima nuclear reactor complex. On March 17-18, 2011 we detected the first arrival of the airborne fission products 131-I, 132-I, 132-Te, 134-Cs, and 137-Cs in Seattle, WA, USA, by identifying their characteristic gamma rays using a germanium detector. The highest detected activity to date is less than 32 mBq/m^3 of 131-I.

If the trend is correct, the plume is likely to be conveyed away from Japanese land for tomorrow. It also shows the plume aiming for the Philippines. If the plume is the same as it has been for the past week as it spread to the US, it will not yield appreciable dose. Ken Bowman, the initiator of the Texas A&M simulations let me know that I should not use the term aerosol simulation for his simulations "as they have no aerosol physics in them, just passive advection by the winds.". Thanks Ken for the correction.

I am wondering if we should not have some type of challenge that would ask people to show side by side how simulations and sensor networks measurements could be compared.

Having a good timeline should allow us to make a better comparison with the Texas A&M simulations and readings on the ground. To the untrained eye it looks like there is only one set of sensors. However, the fog of data is fed from are several sensor networks. There are:

The puffs of smoke that have caused temporary evacuations of the control rooms have not been accompanied by increases in radiation. A gray or black color could indicate a fire, while white “smoke” is more likely steam.

From the FEPC reports, the spent fuel pools at Units 2, 5, and 6 are at acceptable temperatures. Water is being added to the pools at Units 3 and 4, but no temperature is given. The reactor cores in Units 1, 2, and 3 remain partially uncovered by water, but the fact that their containment is holding pressure suggests that there are no large breaches.

Marian Steinbach has started putting the readings she obtained from the SPEED! network into a small video. This is outstanding. If we could include all the data from all the sensor networks and have a similar video from the plumes, I am sure we could begin to infer something

As I was looking at the trajectory computations by the fine folks at Texas A&M and the aerial assessment provided by DOE yesterday, I am in need of an explanation: Namely, if you look at the DOE measurements, there is red corridor going up on the left of Fukushima Dai-ichi:

yet when one check the Texas A&M simulations, only a period of potentially six hours provided this region to the exposure to the plume.namely:

The three days worth of simulation by Texas A&M and covered by the DOE survey are:

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

The U.S Department of Energy just issued a press release and a presentation that featured aerial and ground measurement data. In the presentation there is also a mention of a ground US monitoring station deployed by their Consequence Management Response Teams near Fukushima. (Download the presentation here)

The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology (MEXT), which has published charts we already referenced here (they are now available from our map) of the levels of radiation measured in all prefectures, also published charts of the levels of radioactive iodine 131 and cesium 137 measured in tap water.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

One of the "raison d'etre" of this blog is to compare ground measurements from government or citizen sensor networks and the diverse computational simulations used to model man made or natural plumes. While the French ISRN has performed some computations, its own sensor network is likely to not going to be able to pick up the radiation as it is likely to be in the background when it reaches metropolitan France. At Texas A&M, Kenneth Bowman, Cameron Homeyer have continued providing computation of the transport of aerosols from the Fukushima plant. How do these computations compare with the readings from the different government owned sensor networks ?. In particular, how do these measurements compare with the two events listed in the Texas A&M maps.?

The fire at Reactor 4 took place at 9:40 am March 15 JST (0:40 March 15 GMT) while the explosion of reactor 2 took place earlier at 6:10 a.m (21:10 March 14 GMT) that day (see here for references)

Tuesday, March 152011-03-15 00Z- analysis only (time of reported fire in reactor #4)

According to the trajectories, four ticks later (12 hours later) it is over Ibakari prefecture. The first peak is at 6 AM JST on March 16th (21:00 GMT March 15th). While the red tracks goes south, the green and blue stays over that prefecture and are a therefore consistent with the peak recorded there at 6AM JST (21 hours later). But that measurement is also consistent with the explosion at reactor #2.(24 hours later) as can be seen in the following map.

So from a first reading of these maps, it does not look feasible to evaluate which of these two accidents is contributing to the measurements on the ground. Let us also not that the days after may 16, 17, the aerosols went over the pacific ocean.thereby reducing the dose to the land.